Climate Brief: Rising Sea Levels Rising sea levels are usually depicted like this:

Ref: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-03/sea-level-change-graph-csiro/5296138

So when you take that historical trend and amplify for runaway climate change you get to draw really scary lines on a graph like this:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/06/sea-level-graphs-from-uc-and-some-perspectives/

Note the CSIRO’s money is on 50cm by 2100 not 4 metres and the worst case scenario is 58cm. Where the 4 metres came from is anyone’s guess.

What causes sea level rise Sea level rise has 2 causes:

1. Increase in sea temperature causing the water to simply expand, which causes a rise in levels; 2. Melting of ice sheets and glaciers increasing the available water supply;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise

Are Sea levels rising? Yes. The rise is mostly linear, the CSIRO manage to give their graph a bit of an upward curve which is not there in the official data:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/oceans/sea-level.html

And let’s go back further, humans have been reading tidal gauges for a long time:

http://notrickszone.com/2014/04/18/long-term-tide-gauge-data-show-21st-century-sea-level-rise-will-be-approximately-as-much-as-the-20th-century/

So the end of the Little Ice Age around 1780 has seen the start of an increase in sea levels, and also an increase in air temperatures. Here is the temperature dataset for the same period:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/marineocean-data/extended-reconstructed-sea-surface-temperature-ersst-v3b

OK so some co-relation there, but correlation is not causation and appearances are deceiving, which is explain next. Firstly let’s put that temperature change into a long term perspective:

Now lets look again at atmospheric temperature –vs- sea temperature:

Is Sea Level rise caused by rising temperatures? No. Here is the Ocean temperature anomaly over the last 150 years, no change despite rising atmospheric temperatures:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg

And recent data: Recently world governments have spent a fortune installing 3600 diving buoys, that measure the ocean temperature at different levels, surface, transmit their readings back by satellite then dive and start again. Yet the Argo buoys also don’t show any warming:

http://openyoureyesnews.com/2011/10/01/climate-fact-of-the-day-ocean-temperature-2005-2011/

ARGO: http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Argo_date_guide.html

So OK Is it getting warmer? No. Never in the history of mankind has the world changed in temperature by more than a few degrees in a Century. Look at the graph above, the greatest movement is still only 4 degrees across 500 years. So warmers are relying on making history, creating so much man-made heat as to increase the planet’s warming by a rate that is impossible in nature.

So how are they going? Here is the satellite surface temperatures since 1979:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/16/august-2014-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-update/

And the most recent period - is that a downward trend?

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend

So even if this is a “pause” as the warmers call it, every year that the temperature goes nowhere while the CO2 levels rise is firstly a nail in the coffin of their theory, and secondly it means that we are going to need an improbable reversal from cooling to massive warming and in just a few years or we will have no chance of making the 6 – 10 degrees we will need to melt the poles and raise the seas.

How well do we understand Sea Level Rise? Let’s take a closer look at how the oceans are rising. Here is what the satellite is telling us about sea level changes:

Ref: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/

As you can see yes the sea is rising, but it is not even. There are areas where the level is falling. How is that possible? Well that is the flaw in the alarmist models. If the alarmist models were correct, then the rising air temperature and melting poles should be producing a uniform sea rise. Clearly that is not happening. Why?

1. Ocean currents and Wind. Neither of which features in the official parable from Wikipedia and the Warmers. In order to produce something that is within the ability of human beings to comprehend and program into a mathematical formula alarmist scientists simplify their models. They simply exclude wind and ocean currents. Problem is when you do that you product something that doesn’t match reality.

The models tell us never-ending increases in temperature and sea levels. Observed data shows the opposite.

2. Re-freezing of the Polar Caps Warmers are still pretending that the poles are melting. They are not. The poles are re-freezing and the sea level around the poles is actually going down as a result (see graph above). So the warmers are running short of fuel for their sea level rise.

BTW Here are some graphs on the polar ice extent with 15% coverage. I use that because it compares apples to apples and takes out this argument that “well the ice is there but its thinner”. 15% is 15%.

Antartic

http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/ (using the NOAA website that only gives the dataset not thr neat graphs).

The Antartic is the pole you never hear about because it has been at a RECORD extent for a long time. Note also extent in million sq kilometres. The massive hole in the warmers argument about melting Artic and we are all going to drown is that the Antartic has 3 times the ice of the Artic. The reduction in Artic ice over the last 10 years has been balanced by the increase in Antartic ice.

Conclusion: The theory is the sea level will rise as a result of temperature rise and as a result of the poles melting. But the Poles are re-freezing and neither the ocean or the atmosphere is getting warmer. So where is the sea level rise coming from?

There is no explanation for why the ocean is rising that fits the observed data.

Things to rule out – Carbon Dioxide. CO2 is continuing to grow:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

What we are seeing is increasing CO2 but reducing temperatures. Even the rate of increase of the sea level around Australia is falling (next illustration). So the conclusion actually proves what sceptics have been saying for years, there is a diminishing return on increases in CO2, more accurately increases in Co2 are negative logarithmic.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/australian-sea-levels-are-not-accelerating/

Lets look at how the IPCC forecasts are going:

Not very well.! Remember to hit 58cm the warming needs to be at the very top of the range (let alone 4 metres that would need how much warming ?). So don’t sell that waterfront property just yet. That is probably why the chief of the Climate Council, Tim Flannery recently extended his waterfront property by buying the property next door.

Oh wait isn’t he the same person saying the seas are going to rise 4m, we are going to lose 240 billion of property? I wonder if he is trying to buy the house on the other side as well.

Discussion So here is the theory being tested:

• Increasing CO2 causes • Increasing temperatures, causing • Melting polar caps, causing • Expanding oceans – thermal and water volume, causing • Huge sea level rises.

So the reality is that CO2 levels are certainly going up, however:

• Temperatures are falling • The Antartic is at a record ice extent • The Artic is re-freezing • The Oceans are not warming • Sea levels continue to rise.

By how much does a theory have to fail before warmers give it up?

Having ruled out CO2, temperature and ice extent, it would be nice to know just what was causing the sea level rise. Without knowing that I cant actually project a rise, except to assume that what has been happening will continue to happen, which seems to be the CSIRO approach. I agree with their lower side estimate, 40cm.

Hey that means the flim flam man is only out by a zero!